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Sunday, 12 March 2017

The victory of the BJP in UP represents a major defeat for parties in thrall to the practices of Nehruvian secularism.

The
1947 partition of India was the result of the British colonial power
punishing the Congress Party for its Japan-leaning “neutrality” during
the 1939-45 war and its rewarding the Muslim League for fully backing
the Allies against the Axis. However, to sidestep accountability for the
division, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru reasoned that Partition was
the consequence of Muslim mistrust of the Hindu majority. As a
consequence, soon after the murder of Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru got the
excuse he was seeking to put in place a system based on what may be
termed “Nehruvian secularism”. In this construct, the Hindu majority was
subjected to the restraints and disadvantages ordinarily undergone by
minority groups in countries that are less than fully democratic. In
contrast, the minority communities were given the privileges available
only to the majority community in countries where faith plays a dominant
role in public affairs. Most of the minority communities in India (such
as Sikhs, Jains, [most] Christians and Zoroastrians) had no need of the
crutches provided over time to them by Nehruvian secularism, and made
impressive progress on their own. Nehru did not have these groups in
mind while implementing a concept of secularism that was opposed to the
“equal treatment for all” principle that the actual concept is based on,
but solely the Muslim community, whom he sought through his policies to
wean away permanently from yearning for a repeat of Partition. This
was, paradoxically, by continuing the British-era practice of separating
them from the majority community through a system of differential
treatment to them as compared with policies towards the Hindu majority.
Temples that were expropriated by the state during the period of
colonial rule were retained in the hands of the successor governments to
the British Raj, while temple lands confiscated during British rule
were not returned to these houses of worship even after 1947.

The calculation of the Congress Party led by AICC president Sonia
Gandhi was that the main focus of the party had to be on the minority
vote bank, estimated at around 20% of the population. With this cache
safely in the Congress kitty, the Congress high command figured that all
that was needed was a third of the majority community vote to enable
victory in any multi-cornered contest. In other words, around a 35% vote
share was sufficient to ensure victory in a Lok Sabha poll. This could,
the UPA calculated, be secured by programmes designed to put a
subsistence income in the hands of the very poorest of the population
and by winning over caste and regional elites so as to access the vote
banks they were presumed to control. The root of present-day communal
problems arose at almost the start of the Jawaharlal Nehru
administration (1947-64), when the Prime Minister refused to include
some of the practices within the Muslim community when he made changes
to corresponding Hindu practices through the Hindu Code Bill (1955-56).
Most consequential of all, Nehru refused to follow the tenets of
secularism as accepted the world over by getting implemented a Uniform
Civil Code to ensure equal justice for women across lines of faith. From
Nehru’s time in office onwards, successive governments in India
identified the radical fringe within the Muslim community as being
representative of the entire population of Muslims in the country, a
process continued by Indira Gandhi and by Rajiv Gandhi, not to mention
others such as V.P. Singh and even A.B. Vajpayee. Such a monopoly of
recognition and respect by officialdom combined with the petrodollar
flow into Wahhabi channels since 1979, to create a situation by the
close of the 1980s where Wahhabi groups had become dominant in several
key institutions catering to the Muslim community, despite representing
only a small percentage of the Sunni segment of the Muslim population.
The veto exercised by this small segment of an otherwise moderate
population of India’s Muslims was seen to great effect in 1986, when the
Muslim Women’s Bill forced on the government by them denied to female
citizens of the Muslim faith rights in divorce available to those from
other communities.The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) adopted “Nehruvian secularism”
as its guiding principle, even going as far as to make Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh declare that his focus was on the minorities and that
they should be given first claim on the country’s resources. Several
regulations and laws enforced during that period embodied the Two Nation
Theory of the pre-partition Muslim League by discriminating between
Hindus and Muslims, as usual in the name of “secularism” despite such
unequal treatment being in violation of any genuine secular principle.
There were reports during that period that note was taken of those
officials who had “tika” marks on their forehead and who were
known to visit temples, and that the careers of such officials were
sought to be blighted on the excuse that they were “pro-BJP”.
State-controlled temples of the importance of Guruvayur in Kerala and
Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh went into the effective control of Chief
Ministers of faiths other than Hindu, although it must be added that
neither did the first NDA government do anything to remedy the situation
by freeing Hindu houses of worship from government control. New edicts
such as the Right to Education Act that continued the Nehru-era practice
of discriminating against the Hindu community were passed, and in some
states, those from favoured communities were given protection not by the
law, but from the law, in that crimes committed by them were ignored by
state police departments filled with individuals chosen on the basis of
sectarian considerations. Had such practices taken place in a context
where economic growth was high and levels of unemployment reduced as a
consequence, discontent at the injustices inherent in “Nehruvian
secularism” may not have risen to the level it did during the second
term of the UPA, when the practices of the past were not only not
abandoned, but were added on to. However, incompetence and corruption
became responsible for an economic performance far below that needed to
accommodate the close to 13 million young people needing jobs each year
in this country.Although the UPA sought to emphasise the centrality of the Muslim
community in its calculus, only Wahhabis were handed over the keys to
policy so far as Muslims were concerned, the effect being to ensure a
policy matrix that benefited a few, but kept the bulk of the Muslim
population in a state of economic want and social handicaps. During the
2014 Lok Sabha polls, the overwhelming bulk of the community voted
against the BJP, but since 26 May 2014, it has been clear to many within
this vibrant community that the policies being followed by the Modi
government are neutral as between those of different faiths.Also, the importance given to the Wahhabi fringe has been replaced
with an effort to locate and to interact with leadership that is
non-Wabhabbi. Indeed, Prime Minister Modi has made the battle against
such exclusivist and supremacist beliefs a central part of his messaging
to the people of India. As a consequence, the “moderate majority”
within the Muslim community has begun to raise its voice and to demand
that its views prevail over those of the Wahhabis in matters of concern
to millions of families, such as the cruel practice of triple talaq. The
intention of the BJP appears to be to win over moderate (and more
especially, modern) Muslims to its side, as also Muslim women, in
addition to the Shia community, that has long had a soft corner for such
BJP leaders as A.B. Vajpayee and Rajnath Singh. Meanwhile, the way in
which political formations in Uttar Pradesh other than the BJP doubled
down on their efforts at giving a privileged position to the elites of
particular communities reminded the majority community of the
discrimination it had undergone during the UPA period.Effective policy needs to be neutral as between different faiths, a
truism that the UPA refused to acknowledge in its repeated efforts at
retaining what has been termed the “minority vote bank”.Both the Samajwadi Party as well as the Bahujan Samaj Party in the
just concluded UP Assembly polls sought to expropriate the Sonia Gandhi
strategy of seeking minority votes in their entirety. This they sought
to achieve by giving a large number of tickets to Muslim candidates, few
of whom were part of the “Moderate Majority” of Muslims. This had its
own effect on the rest of the population, which responded by moving over
to the BJP side. Even among the minorities, sections who understood
that sectarian politics would only perpetuate the economic hardship of
several sections of the Muslim community voted for the BJP. This was as a
consequence of the belief that Modi would ensure that UP (the state in
which he was elected to Parliament) get a Chief Minister who would
govern the state in as effective a manner as Modi did Gujarat for over a
decade.More and more from the Moderate Muslim Majority are finally coming
into the open about the manner in which the Wahhabis are damaging a
vibrant community through influencing successive governments into
implement regressive policies that favour the fundamentalist few and go
against the interests of the moderate (indeed, modern) many. Muslim
women in particular are losing their fear of the Wahhabis and appear to
have voted for the party led by Prime Minister Modi in large numbers,
especially after his team spoke out against the practice of triple
talaq.The victory of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh represents the second major
defeat for those parties in thrall to the practices of Nehruvian
secularism, the first being the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Even the Aam Aadmi
Party, although in its initial phase giving hope of a liberal ethos,
adopted several of the stances of the UPA where the community matrix in
India was concerned. Hopefully, all such parties will move away from
community-centred and caste-specific politics and embrace measures that
are neutral between a citizen of India and any other.Failing this, they appear destined to repeat the UP loss in
subsequent contests in major theatres. More and more voters in India,
especially from among the young, understand that the only path to
success in the 21st century is through the embrace of the values inherent in the qualities of moderation and modernity, and are voting accordingly.

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About Prof. M. D. Nalapat

Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat (aka MD Nalapat or Monu Nalapat), holds the UNESCO Peace Chair and is Director of the Department of Geopolitics at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India. The former Coordinating Editor of the Times of India, he writes extensively on security, policy and international affairs. Prof. Nalapat has no formal role in government, although he is said to influence policy at the highest levels. @MD_Nalapat

MD Nalapat's anthology 'Indutva' (1999)

In 1999, Har-Anand published Indutva an anthology of MD Nalapat's 1990s columns from the Times of India. The individual columns are posted here, in 1998 and 1999 of the blog archive, though the exact dates of publication are uncertain.